The rain was relentless that night, hammering the streets of the old city like a fist against a drum. Victor Grayson, soaked to the bone, ducked into the nearest shelter he could find—an abandoned tenement building with cracked windows and a sagging roof. He’d been walking home from the bar, a shortcut through a part of town he didn’t know well, when the storm hit. The place smelled of mildew and rot, but it was dry, and that was enough.
Inside, the air was thick and stale, the kind of stillness that presses against your chest. A single flickering bulb hung from the ceiling, casting jagged shadows across the peeling wallpaper. Victor shook the water from his coat and scanned the room: a broken chair, a rusted radiator, and a narrow staircase spiraling upward into the dark. It didn’t look like much, but something about it tugged at him—a faint whisper of curiosity, or maybe unease. He couldn’t tell.
He wasn’t sure why he started climbing. Maybe it was the restless energy of the storm, or the way the shadows seemed to shift just out of sight. The stairs creaked under his weight, each step groaning like a living thing. The wood was worn smooth, polished by years of unseen feet. He figured he’d go up a floor or two, see if there was a window with a view of the storm, then head back down. Simple enough.
But the staircase didn’t end.
At first, he didn’t notice. One floor became two, then three. The walls stayed the same—cracked plaster, streaked with damp, lit by the occasional bare bulb dangling from a frayed wire. He kept climbing, counting the steps in his head: ten, twenty, fifty. No landings, no doors, just the endless spiral twisting upward. His calves began to ache, a dull burn creeping into his legs, but he pressed on. It had to end soon. Buildings didn’t go up forever.
By the hundredth step, the air grew colder. His breath fogged in front of him, curling in the dim light. The walls seemed closer now, the staircase narrower. He brushed his hand against the plaster and flinched—it was damp, almost slimy, like the skin of something alive. A faint sound started to follow him, a soft tap-tap-tap, like footsteps trailing just out of sync with his own. He stopped, heart thudding, and listened. Silence. Then, as he took another step, it came again: tap-tap-tap.
“Who’s there?” he called, his voice swallowed by the spiral. No answer. Just the echo of his own words, warped and distant, bouncing back from above. He glanced down, expecting to see the foyer far below, but the stairs behind him vanished into a thick, inky blackness. No way back. Only up.
Panic clawed at him, but he kept climbing. What else could he do? The bulbs grew scarcer, their light weaker, until he was moving through near darkness, guided only by the feel of the railing under his hand. It wasn’t wood anymore—it was cold, slick, like metal coated in frost. The tap-tap-tap grew louder, closer, and now there was something else: a low hum, barely audible, vibrating through the steps. It felt like a voice, too deep to understand, murmuring secrets he wasn’t meant to hear.
Hours passed—or maybe minutes. Time blurred into a haze of aching legs and shallow breaths. His mind frayed at the edges, thoughts slipping like wet paper. He saw things in the shadows—shapes that weren’t there. A hand reaching from the wall, fingers long and thin, then gone. Eyes glinting in the dark, unblinking, then vanishing. He told himself it was exhaustion, a trick of the light, but the hum grew louder, and the air pressed heavier, and he knew he wasn’t alone.
At some point, he stopped counting steps. His body moved on autopilot, one foot after the other, up and up and up. The walls were alive now, pulsing faintly, streaked with veins of black mold that writhed like worms. The tap-tap-tap was right behind him, a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. He didn’t dare look back. He couldn’t. If he saw it—whatever it was—he’d lose what little sanity he had left.
Then he heard it: a whisper. Soft, sibilant, curling around his ears like smoke. “Keep climbing,” it said. “You’re almost there.” His blood turned to ice. The voice wasn’t human—it was too hollow, too vast, like the sound of wind through a cavern. He stumbled, catching himself on the railing, and felt it twist under his grip, coiling like a snake.
“Where am I going?” he rasped, throat raw. The whisper laughed, a sound like glass shattering in slow motion. “Up,” it said. “Always up.”
He wanted to stop. Every muscle screamed for it, every instinct begged him to collapse and let the dark take him. But he couldn’t. The stairs wouldn’t let him. They pulled him forward, an invisible thread hooked into his soul, dragging him higher. The bulbs were gone now, the darkness total, but he could still see—because the walls glowed faintly, a sickly green that pulsed in time with the hum. Faces pressed against the plaster, mouths open in silent screams, eyes following him as he passed.
Days. Weeks. Years. He didn’t know how long he climbed. His body shouldn’t have held out, but it did, fueled by something beyond hunger or fatigue. The whisper became a chorus, a thousand voices overlapping, urging him on. “Almost there. Almost there.” The tap-tap-tap was deafening, a drumbeat in his skull, and he felt it now—something brushing his neck, cold and wet, like fingers made of shadow.
At last, he saw it: a door. It loomed at the top of the staircase, ancient and iron-bound, its surface etched with symbols that hurt to look at. Relief flooded him, hot and desperate. He lunged for it, hands trembling as he gripped the handle. It was freezing, burning his skin, but he turned it anyway. The door creaked open, and beyond it—
Stairs. More stairs. Spiraling upward into the void, identical to the ones he’d climbed, stretching on forever. The chorus laughed, a sound that split his mind in two, and the thing behind him—the thing that had followed him all this way—pressed against his back, its breath a damp hiss against his ear.
“Keep climbing,” it whispered.
Victor screamed, but the sound never left his throat. The door slammed shut behind him, and he took the first step.